Wednesday 6 March 2019

Second Chances and Top Novels

Under the curious headline here (on the BBC News website) is quite an interesting story: Cambridge University is going to use the clearing process to offer a second chance to students from 'deprived' backgrounds who narrowly miss getting a place on their initial application. As this is not a quota as such, and ethnic origin is not taken into account, it seems a sensible enough attempt to redress an undoubted imbalance. I knew things were bad, but I was startled to read that these days only two per cent of Cambridge students are white working-class. The percentage was certainly very much higher in my day – but there was a reason for that. As Charles Moore remarked in last week's Spectator:
'The truth is that no policy ever devised has seriously challenged the dominance of hereditary elites at Oxford and Cambridge, except for one. This was a thing called the grammar school, but you don't hear much about it these days.'

On a quite unrelated matter (and with a double tip of the hat to Dave Lull and Frank Wilson), I've been reading about a new list of the 100 Top Novels. What makes this one interesting is that the sole criterion is aggregate library holdings. And the most widely held novel in libraries worldwide is... Don Quixote. I must admit I was surprised (and I wonder if the figures include all published versions of the title, including abridgements, children's editions, graphic novels, etc.). The literary monument that is the full and unabridged Don Quixote is surely one of the least read of all the great novels (and I suspect Moby-Dick runs it fairly close). Everybody 'knows' Don Quixote, but how many have read it in its entirety? I know I haven't (nor, to my deeper shame, have I ever read all through Moby-Dick). Strange that a Great Unread like Don Quixote should be the book most frequently found on library shelves... The rest of the top five are much less surprising – Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Even I've read all of those.






 

9 comments:

  1. 'Even I've read all of those' Has your modesty no limit? I don't think you realize how much we literary pygmies look up to you Nige. And there was I thinking that I was alone in finding Moby-Dick a bit of a trudge.

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  2. You'd be surprised what I haven't read, Mm – I could make a long list, but it would do my credibility no good at all. War and Peace for one, and Proust for a good many more. Moby-Dick is a lot of a trudge, IMHO, but at the same time unmistakably great. I think the same can be said of Don Quixote. Which doesn't really help...

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  3. I’ve read War & Peace! Practically nothing else you write about, but that one I have read. It was a digital edition on iBooks and I resolved to read 25 pages a day thus complete it in 100 days. Some days I managed more than that but 25 was the minimum. I liked it. The ending, not so much. Tried the same trick with Martin Cuzzlewit and conceded defeat at 250 pages. Didn’t like that one.

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  4. Nice work Karen. Chuzzlewit I have read – a struggle at times, I seem to remember, but it's got the wonderful Sarah Gamp and her imaginary friend.

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  5. A few years ago I was in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Lots of mini-lectures were going on in front of modern – usually conceptual – works of art. They were the usual servings of unprovable, unfalsifiable drivel you can hear in any art school and, as ever, went unchallenged by the members of the audience who clearly didn’t want to be thought stupid. Later, as I was loitering in the gift shop, I overheard the very forthright lady on the till said vehemently to a customer, ‘If you ask me art is just what you can get away with.’ And there you have it: educated ignorance (i.e. the sort of stuff only educated people are stupid enough to believe) and common sense. In other words, Don Quixote versus Sancho Panza. Cervantes was spot on: the Sancho Panzas are the ones who work on the till, the Dons are paid more to give meaningless lectures. It’s a wonderful pairing and when you look around you can see it everywhere. Do read it: it’s a truly great book.

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  6. You're dead right, Ingoldsby – and I have no doubts about Don Quixote being (like Moby-Dick) a great book. I've read enough of it to get the greatness, tho I'm sure I'd get more if I read the whole thing. These days, to be honest, it's largely a question of reading stamina – mine is nothing like it was when I was young, and I've always been quite a slow reader. One of the joys of the reading life is the knowledge that there is always more, and a lot of it is great...

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